“The parole board has again refused to release a Nova Scotia man jailed in British Columbia for sex crimes who is a suspect in cold case murders,” reports Chris Lambie for the Chronicle Herald:
Andrew Paul Johnson, 58, is deemed a dangerous offender.
[…]
In 1998, sources told The Chronicle Herald that Johnson was a suspect in at least a dozen killings in this province dating back to 1976. The sources said he was being investigated in connection with the disappearance of Kimberly McAndrew in 1989, the 1992 murder in the Halifax area of Andrea King of Surrey, B.C., and the death of Stephen Michael Hall, whose body was found in woods near Chester in 1996. But Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP have never officially said Johnson is a suspect in any murder probe.
Stephen Kimber wrote about Johnson in 2009:
Halifax police had been looking for Johnson, too. In 1992, he had pleaded guilty to confining and sexually assaulting his Halifax girlfriend. In 1997, he’d been caught masturbating in his car while watching girls at play in Hammonds Plains. There was a warrant for his arrest for harassing a 12-year-old Whites Lake girl while posing as a teen fashion representative. And, shortly before turning up in BC, he had disappeared from a Dartmouth sexual offender treatment program — but not before turning in a chilling assignment. Psychiatrist Joseph Gabriel asked participants in the program to write an essay about a sexual assault from the point of view of its victim.
Johnson had written his about the rape and murder of Kimberly McAndrew.
[…]
Intriguingly, at the time of Kimberly’s disappearance, the telephone directory lists Johnson’s girlfriend as living in an apartment in a complex across from the Canadian Tire parking lot.
My understanding is that Halifax police investigators flew to B.C. to interview Johnson but botched the interrogation and came home empty-handed
There were a lot of things wrong with the Kimberly McAndrew investigation. It is the subject of Part 4 of my Dead Wrong series, “Channelling Kimberly McAndrew”:
With no fresh ideas and no new leads, [police investigator] Dave MacDonald took an extraordinary step: he called a psychic.
Noreen Renier is perhaps the psychic best known to law enforcement, including to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, a connection she plays up on her website…
Last year, I called Renier at her Florida home to ask her about the Kimberly McAndrew case.
“Nova Scotia? Where’s that?” she asked. I explained that Nova Scotia is a province in eastern Canada, and that Halifax is the capital city. Reiner was talkative and pleasant, and as we continued our conversation, I could hear her rifling through her papers. “Oh yes,” she said, “Kimberly! Here it is! Do you want the tapes?”
Indeed I did, and a couple of weeks later three cassette tapes, the recordings of psychic Noreen Renier’s sessions with Halifax police Constable Dave MacDonald, arrived in my mailbox. I’m publishing those recordings here in their entirety because they provide an extraordinary look into a police investigation that went terribly wrong.
As part of this months’ subscription drive, I’m taking “Channelling Kimberly McAndrew” out from behind the paywall as an example of the kind of work your subscriptions pay for.
Click here to read “Channelling Kimberly McAndrew.”
It took a great deal of work to produce that story. And a great deal of money.
If you value this sort of in-depth journalism, please subscribe.
News
1. Emera
Emera is trying to force a sale of publicly owned Grand Bahama Power stock, according to Bahama lawyer Frederick Smith:
The attempted forcible buy-out of Grand Bahama Power Company by a 100 percent foreign-owned entity is nothing less than an aggressive hostile takeover that is clearly not in the best interest of The Bahamas.
The proposed move contravenes Bahamian law on a number of levels and raises serious questions about the strength of our sovereignty and the integrity of our public institutions. All Bahamians who care about their rights and are committed to national self-determination should call on the government to resist this ill-conceived plan.
[…]
Emera has been very secretive about its scheme to compulsorily acquire the roughly 20 percent of GB Power currently owned by Bahamians. The deal is highly convoluted and difficult to wrap one’s head round, but essentially it amounts to a scenario where, depending on the results of a shareholder vote this month, Bahamians will be forced to give up their ownership stake in the company — whether they like it or not.
This deal has been negotiated without any consultation with the citizens and residents who own the shares and without the negotiations even being made a matter of public knowledge.
h/t @BigJMcC
2. Pedestrian struck
From police releases:
At 10:16 a.m. on November 16, police responded to a vehicle/pedestrian collision that occurred in the 560 block of Herring Cove Road. A car travelling inbound on Herring Cove Road struck a woman as she was crossing the street in a marked crosswalk. The woman, who is in her 40s, was transported to hospital for treatment of what are believed to be life-threatening injuries
An update — yesterday’s vehicle/pedestrian collision on Herring Cove Road: The 18-year-old driver of the vehicle that struck the pedestrian will appear in Halifax Provincial Court today facing charges of Dangerous Driving Causing Bodily Harm and Criminal Negligence Causing Bodily Harm. The victim, 48-years-old, remains in hospital, her injuries life-threatening.
3. Highfield Park sold
“Westdale Construction Limited and Urbanfund Corp. have agreed to purchase the 1,354-unit Highfield Park multi-family residential portfolio in Dartmouth, N.S.,” reported Steve McLean for Property Biz Canada in late August:
Westdale will have an 80 per cent share and Urbanfund will have a 20 per cent stake in the newly incorporated Highfield Park Residential Inc., which will acquire the portfolio for $113 million from Oxford Properties.
The privately owned Westdale, the publicly traded Urbanfund’s largest shareholder, will manage the property.
[…]
Highfield Park is comprised of 20 low-rise buildings on a 37-acre site in a residential neighbourhood that’s served by public transit. Apartment sizes range in size from bachelor units to three-bedroom suites, and some come furnished.
[…]
Highfield Park is 95.3 per cent occupied, which is consistent with the Dartmouth average. The goal is to drive occupancy by leveraging its location next to the Highfield Road transit terminal, which provides direct access to downtown Halifax, the 1.7 million-square-foot Dartmouth Crossing power centre and the 9.7 million-square-foot Burnside Industrial Park.
I think “drive occupancy” means “increase rent.”
A $108.5 million sale was recorded on October 10 (I’m guessing the remaining $4.5 million is for assets that aren’t real estate). As reader Colin May points out in yesterday’s comment section, that single sale brings in $1,627,500 to city coffers via the deed transfer tax.
Westdale has already rebranded the property.
4. CFL
“The Canadian Football League has responded to a report by TSN’s Dave Naylor regarding the league’s interest in expanding to Halifax, NS in the near future,” reads a weirdly third-person self-referential press release issued by the CFL:
The league said Thursday afternoon that it can “confirm the CFL has had discussions with a group interested in securing a Canadian Football League franchise for the city of Halifax.”
“We can confirm the CFL has had discussions with a group interested in securing a Canadian Football League franchise for the city of Halifax. While this group has been professional, enthusiastic and impressive, these conversations are relatively new and a very thorough process of due diligence must be put in place and completed before we can fully assess the viability of the project. We want to publicly thank this group for its passion for the CFL and we thank the members of the media for their interest.”
In his report, Naylor stated that “a group of businessmen with ties to Eastern Canada would like to make the Canadian Football League’s dream of a tenth franchise come true in Halifax.”
My read: this is all just blowing smoke. No one in their right mind would start a CFL team in Halifax without securing a stadium and no one in their right mind would privately finance a stadium.
There are plenty of politicians who think we’re living in the 1980s and the citizens will vote football-pandering politicians into office forever if they build a publicly financed stadium and hand it over to, oh, I dunno, Don Mills and his buddies, and never mind the quarter-billion (or whatever) debt.
But this isn’t the 1980s. The public is increasingly onto the stadium scam. And really, the public ain’t so much into football anymore.
But hey, it generates headlines.
Views
1. The price they paid
“[Ellen] Page’s [Facebook] post and revelations by other actors, notably that of Lupita Nyong’o, have prompted me to reflect anew on the troubled life of pioneering African-American actor, Dorothy Dandridge,” writes Evelyn C. White:
The first black woman to garner a Best Actress Academy Award nomination (for Carmen Jones), Dandridge was wooed by Otto Preminger, the married director of the 1954 film. Dandridge eventually tired of her role as Preminger’s “side piece” and ended the affair.
The late 1950s found Dandridge (who was bested by Grace Kelly in The Country Girlfor the Oscar) battling the tabloid press about stories that effectively depicted her as a “dusky” tramp. Throughout her life, she’d struggled to overcome a deluge of professional and personal crises. Chief among them, her inability to financially support her only child, a daughter who was born brain-damaged and later became a ward of the state.
On September, 8, 1965, Dandridge, 42, was discovered dead in her Hollywood apartment. Conflicting reports remain about the official cause of her death.
Juxtaposed against current news about the film industry, I’m hard pressed to imagine how Dandridge avoided the “casting couch.” Indeed, a close friend later likened her plight to that of an iconic star born Norma Jean Mortenson who’d died, three years prior, at age 36.
“Marilyn Monroe,” the friend told The Washington Post in a 1988 article about Dorothy Dandridge. “They got the same treatment from men.”
Click here to read “The price they paid.”
2. Cranky letter of the day
To the Charlottetown Guardian:
I was dismayed to read The Guardian’s Remembrance Day headline, “No regrets.” Millions upon millions of people die in often senseless wars, battling so the rich can profit while the poor are sacrificed and tortured for their benefit.
You might excuse the callousness of it by saying it refers to the young man who is suffering from PTSD and physical injuries suffered in military service. That a former soldier does not regret being injured or killing people in a foreign land is ludicrous.
Maybe he doesn’t regret joining the military and cementing a bond with others contracted to kill for Canada, but he must surely regret being hit by the IED that sent him to hospital. I’m sure he also regrets the devastating effects of PTSD from which he has and continues to suffer.
Remembrance Day is not a day to celebrate the military industrial complex nor is it a time to celebrate victories that resulted in millions of people around the world dying. Remembrance Day is a time to regret, a time to remember those who suffered and died and to work towards peace in our time and for future generations. It is not a time to honour the military; it is a time to remember those who died fighting in wars that should have been prevented.
Remembrance Day is a day to regret the killing of innocents.
Lest we forget, Remembrance Day is a time to lay down arms and work for peace.
Wendy Jones, Belle River
Government
No public meetings.
On campus
Dalhousie
Piano Recital (Friday, 12pm, Room 406, Dalhousie Arts Centre) — students of Peter Allen and Lynn Stodola will perform.
Exploiting Reversible B-O Bonds in Organocatalysis and Chemical Biology (Friday, 1:30pm, Room 226, Chemistry Building) — Dennis Hall from the University of Alberta will speak.
Routine Infanticide (Friday, 3:35pm, Room 1170, Marion McCain Building) — Gregory Hanlon will speak on “Death Control in the West: New Research on Routine Infanticide in Northern Italy from the 16th to the 18th Century.”
Prostate Cancer Quality of Life Research (Friday, 3:40pm, Room 5620, Life Sciences Centre) — Gabriela Ilie will speak.
Race in a Glass Nation: Fragility and Dissent in the University and Beyond (Friday, 6pm, Alumni Hall, New Academic Building, University of Kings College) — Sunera Thobani, from the University of British Columbia will speak on the implications of talking about race in the 21st century, with a panel discussion to follow. Onsite childcare available.
Saint Mary’s
The Impact of Demographic Shift on Future of Work and Housing (Friday, 8am, in the theatre named for a bank in the building named for a grocery store) — speakers include Deputy Minister Simon d’Entremont of the Nova Scotia Department of Seniors; Suzanne Cook of York University; Martha MacDonald of Saint Mary’s University; and Karen Foster of Dalhousie University. Tickets: https://housingandwork.eventbrite.ca.
Thesis Defence, Business Administration (Friday, 1pm, Room 171, Loyola Building) — PhD candidate Catherine Anne Fitzgerald will defend her thesis, “The Construction of Canadian Business Schools’ Occupational Health and Safety Curriculum.”
In the harbour
9am: Nolhanava, ro-ro cargo, moves from Pier 36 to Pier 42
10am: Brevik Bridge, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Fos Sur Mer, France
10am: Algoma Mariner, bulker, sails from National Gypsum for sea
11:11am: Baltimore Highway, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Bremerhaven, Germany
11:11am: Thorco Crown, cargo ship, arrives at Pier 27 from Zhangjiagang, China
11:11am: Torm Carina, oil tanker, arrives at Irving Oil from IJmuiden, Netherlands
1pm: NYK Artemis, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for the Suez Canal
3pm: Asian Pride, bulk carrier, arrives at Sheet Harbour from Rotterdam
3pm: YM Moderation, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Colombo, Sri Lanka
3pm: Thorco Crown, cargo ship, sails from Pier 27 for sea
3:30pm: Baltimore Highway, car carrier, sails from Autoport for sea
4:30pm: Brevik Bridge, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for New York
4:30pm: Nolhanava, ro-ro cargo, sails from Pier 42 for Saint-Pierre
6pm: Thorco Logos, cargo ship, moves from Pier 9 to Bedford Basin anchorage
8pm: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, sails from Pier 41 for St. John’s
Footnotes
Justice Suzanne Hood will issue her decision in the Calvin Clarke vs Halifax Herald Ltd. this morning. I’ll have an update both on Twitter (@Tim_Bousquet) and on the website.
Due to extenuating circumstances, we’ve aborted this week’s Examineradio podcast.
As a former resident of the 55 block of Highfield Apts,( stigma aside, affordable rent and a frickin’ fireplace in my appartment, sold me on the unit) and then transfered to another Oxford owned property in a different city that changed hands during my residency, I am very curious as to why Oxford is offloading their residential properties.
‘In the Harbour’ once again shows a tanker arriving with refined products from Holland
So the backroom boys are at it again trying to sneak a CFL franchise into a market which clearly cannot support such a pro team. Pretty soon the push for a publicly funded stadium will surface which like the Nova Centre will end up getting public financial support through mis-truths and outright skulduggery.
Why did the council meet in secret to hear the pitch from CFL representatives and investors ?
Perhaps Mayor Savage can explain to the media the who, what, and why of the decision to meet in secret.
I find it amusing to think that Don Mills and his cronies might still be trying to bring in a CFL team. For anyone who wonders whether these titans of industry are capable of running a professional sports franchise I have two words; Halifax Hurricanes.
I was a season ticket holder for a number of years and the attendance trajectory was on the upswing annually. I stopped attending, first because of the shoddy treatment of the players at the hands of management and then, because Mark Lever’s Chronicle Herald took over marketing in the middle of the strike. My understanding is that attendance has tanked since I stopped attending. No, it’s not my fault, but I note that the attendance slide seems to have begun when the new management group (the afore mentioned Don Mills and his buds) took over.
If and when the boys start the drum beat for a publically funded stadium, I think the best response would be to ask, “How’s that Hurricanes thing working for you, anyway?”
I wouldn’t mind a publicly funded stadium as long as the franchise were publicly run with openness and transparency and accountability to the taxpayers and fans.
If it’s all a scam and ego trip for the rich boys then fuck that.